Death Penalty News

Burkina Faso is 32nd of Africa's 54 countries banning homosexuality Burkina Faso has passed a new law banning homosexuality this week, with penalties of up to five years in prison making it the latest African state to crack down on same-sex relations. The military junta-run state proposed the ban in 2024, announcing a ban on homosexual acts, but it was never outlawed.  Justice Minister Edasso Rodrigue Bayala said the junta’s cabinet had approved legislation to make it a punishable offence, but he did not give further details.

BAMAKO, Mali — A court in Mali’s capital Bamako sentenced an Islamist militant leader and 14 other people to death on Friday for jihadist activity in the south of the war-torn Sahel state. “I don’t regret anything because our fight is against the secularism of the Malian state. If I had the opportunity, I would do it again,” said the main defendant Souleymane Keita, 61. The court charged Keita, the head of an al-Qaeda offshoot named Khaled Ibn al-Walid, for attacks carried out in Mali’s south, near the border with Ivory Coast. Mali has been struggling to contain a brutal jihadist insurgency that first emerged in the north in 2012, and has since spread to the center of the country and to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed in the conflict to date, and hundreds of thousands have had to flee their homes. Mali’s south has been relatively spared the violence in other parts of the vast country, however. Keita is thought to have fought in n...

BAMAKO - Two jihadists were found guilty and sentenced to death by a Malian court on Wednesday for the killing of over two dozen people in attacks targeting Westerners in 2015. The shocking attacks were among the first to explicitly target bars and restaurants popular with foreigners in Mali, which has been gripped by a brutal jihadist insurgency since 2012. Fawaz Ould Ahmed, a Mauritanian Islamist also known as "Ibrahim 10", and his Malian co-defendant, Sadou Chaka, were handed the death sentences immediately after the verdict was read out at the end of two days of hearings. A third defendant, Abdoulbaki Abdramane Maiga, also a Malian national, was sentenced to death in absentia. Ould Ahmed had earlier told the trial that he had attacked a nightclub in the capital Bamako, killing five people, in revenge for cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed by France's Charlie Hebdo magazine. A Frenchman, a Belgian and three Malians were killed in the March 2015 attack, when gunmen spraye...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — More than 10,000 Islamic State fighters are estimated to remain active in Iraq and Syria two years after the militant group’s defeat, and their attacks have significantly increased this year, the U.N. counter-terrorism chief said Monday. Vladimir Voronkov told the U.N. Security Council that Islamic State fighters move freely “in small cells between the two countries.” He said the Islamic State extremist group — also known as IS, ISIL and ISIS — has regrouped and its activity has increased not only in conflict zones like Iraq and Syria but also in some regional affiliates. “However, in non-conflict zones, the threat appears to have decreased in the short term,” he said. “Measures to minimize the spread of COVID-19, such as lockdowns and restrictions on movement, seem to have reduced the risk of terrorist attacks in many countries.” Nonetheless, Voronkov said, “there is a continued trend of attacks by individuals inspired online and acting alone o...

The death penalty is on the books, under sharia, in Mauritania, Sudan and northern Nigeria, although there have been no known executions in recent times. JOHANNESBURG – More than half of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa have anti-homosexuality laws, although others have moved towards legal tolerance, watchdogs say. Twenty-eight out of 49 countries have laws penalising same-sex relationships, according to Neela Ghoshal, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) specialist in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights. The death penalty is on the books, under sharia, in Mauritania, Sudan and northern Nigeria, although there have been no known executions in recent times. In southern Somalia, gay men are believed to have been put to death in the territory ruled by the Al Shabaab jihadist group. However, Angola, Mozambique and Seychelles have scrapped anti-gay laws in recent years. Last month, Kenya's high court caused widespread dismay when it refused to scrap laws c...

An unmarried couple were stoned to death in public in northeast Mali by "Islamists", local officials revealed, the first such incident since jihadist groups were driven out of the region. Jihadists seized key northern cities in March 2012, and though they were driven out by a French-led military intervention in 2013 , Islamist groups continue to make their presence felt with frequent attacks on domestic and foreign forces. "The Islamists dug two holes where they put the man and the woman who lived maritally without being married," said a local official. "They were stoned to death." The stoning happened in Taghlit on Tuesday, close to Aguelhok in the Kidal region, and the same source told AFP that members of the public were invited to take part. "Four people threw stones at them until they died," they said. Another local official said the Islamists had accused the unmarried couple of violating "Islamic law", which ...

Reuters has reported that two men from Gao, Mali, who were due to be executed for having gay sex by an extreme Muslim militia, were rescued when French-led forces liberated the town. France, along with other African nations and including the Malian army, intervened to end a ten-month rebellion by groups of Tuareg tribes and Islamist extremists. The groups have taken over most of Northern Mali, including the town of Gao enforcing Sharia law, including punishing thieves with amputation and executing gays. Badou Ahmed, one of the men told Reuters’ reporters yesterday (3 January) that he was arrested after being accused of having gay sex but was able to walk free after the French-led troops took over Gao. Ahmed is covered with scars and walks with a limp, which he reported was a result of being beaten unconscious by the militias. Ahmed told Reuters that he had not been allowed to present witnesses at his trial and that his captors had threatened to cut his throat fo...

Ultra-conservatives in Mali's northern city of Timbuktu have publicly executed a man accused of murder, a punishment witnessed by about 600 people. On Tuesday evening, the convicted man was shot in the back, but did not die until several hours later, said Timbuktu resident Oumar Maiga. The convicted man's family had offered compensation to the victim's family but it had not been accepted. The man was brought in handcuffs to an area between two hotels in Timbuktu and seated with his legs pointed toward Mecca before a judge then ordered the sentence to be carried out. Sanda Ould Boumana, a spokesman for Ansar Dine, the armed group that controls Timbuktu, told Reuters the executed man "turned himself in...He was judged, condemned to death and executed this evening. He was shot in the same way he shot his victim. This is what sharia says." Boumana added that the executed man was himself a member of the group. The public execution is the latest i...

A man with his right hand and left foot covered in bandages after they were chopped off by Islamists/AFP As conflict continues in Mali, Amnesty International has unearthed evidence that civilians are on the receiving end of horrific abuses that include amputations, sexual violence and extra-judicial executions. After a 15-day research mission to Mali earlier this month, the organization launched a new briefing revealing such abuses in several locations across the country. Amputations In northern Mali, Islamist groups bent on imposing their interpretation of Sharia law are increasingly imposing violent punishments such as amputations following sham trials of those accused of committing crimes. The latest amputation was carried out on 16 September, and since August Amnesty International has documented a total of seven people who faced such punishment after hasty sham trials on charges of theft or robbery. An eyewitness to one amputation on 10 September in the t...

A couple who had sex outside marriage has been stoned to death at the weekend by Islamists in the town of Aguelhok in northern Mali, officials say. The man and woman were buried up to their necks, then pelted with stones until they died. The northern half of Mali has been overrun by rebels - Tuareg and Islamist - following a coup in Mali's capital. Aguelhok in the region of Kidal was one of the first to be captured by Tuareg separatist rebels. The Islamists in Aguelhok stoned the couple to death in front of about 200 people, officials said. "I was there. The Islamists took the unmarried couple to the centre of Aguelhok. The couple was placed in two holes and the Islamists stoned them to death," a local government official told the AFP news agency. "The woman fainted after the first few blows," he said, adding that the man had shouted out once and then fallen silent. Click here to read the full article Source: BBC News, July 30,...

BAMAKO (Reuters) - A Malian court has sentenced to death a Tunisian man accused of throwing an explosive device at the French embassy in Mali's capital in January, wounding two people, state television reported on Tuesday. Like many countries in West Africa, Mali maintains capital punishment, but the sentences are rarely carried out and are often commuted to life imprisonment. "In the terrorism case against Bachir Sinoun, who exploded a grenade outside the French embassy on January 5, the accused has been sentenced to death and has to pay a fine of 10 million CFA francs," the court said in its ruling issued Monday and carried by national TV on Tuesday. Mali and its neighbours Mauritania and Niger are struggling to contain a growing threat by Islamist militants operating across West Africa's remote desert regions. However, Malian authorities have said Sinoun, who escaped prison in March but was rearrested a few days later, was acting alone in the botched attack and...

The United Nations General Assembly has voted to restore a reference to sexual orientation in a resolution opposing the unjustified killings of minority groups. Last month, a UN panel deleted a reference to gays and lesbians in resolution introduced by Morocco and Mali. The vast majority of countries in support were African or Arabic. Many of the supporting countries criminalise homosexuality and five treat it as a capital offence. But today, the UN General Assembly voted 93 in favour of the United States’ proposal to restore the reference to sexual orientation, 55 countries voted against and 27 abstained. The assembly then approved the amended resolution with 122 in favour, none against and 59 abstentions. The amendment passed last month called for the words “sexual orientation” to be replaced with “discriminatory reasons on any basis”. The resolution made explicit reference to a large number of groups, including human rights defenders, religious and ethnic minorities and street ...

A United Nations panel has deleted a reference to gays and lesbians in a resolution condemning unjustified executions. The motion was introduced by Morocco and Mali and the vast majority of countries in support were African or Arabic. Many of the supporting countries criminalise homosexuality and five treat it as a capital offence. The amendment called for the words “sexual orientation” to be replaced with “discriminatory reasons on any basis”. The resolution makes explicit reference to a large number of groups, including human rights defenders, religious and ethnic minorities and street children. It narrowly passed 79-70 and was then approved by the UN General Assembly committee with 165 in favour and ten abstentions. The amendment, which condemns extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions and other killings, is voted on by the UN General Assembly every two years. It has contained a reference to sexual orientation for the last ten years. Cary Alan Johnson, executive direct...